How Could We Doubt After All He’s Done?

Oh, crossing family, it is so good to be with you.

I love you. I love this church, and I am

incredibly thankful to God for the incredible work that He is

doing in this church and through you in this season.

It is really special to be a part of it.

I want to welcome those of you joining from all of our

different locations as well as those of you who are watching

online and those of you who are watching inside.

I also want to welcome those of you who are joining us for the

first time or the first time in a long time.

And what I would encourage you to do, and I know this might

sound crazy, but I would encourage you to take advantage

of the QR code on the seat in front of you and visit our new

here booth in all of our lobbies or our Next Step booth because

we want a chance to get to know you a little bit better.

I'm going to give you the title to my message.

The title of my message is how could you turn to your neighbor,

look at him in the face and say, how could you Now?

You probably did it sweet. What I need you to do is I need

you to channel that judgmental woman in your life where you

look down the nose. How could you turn to your other

neighbor and give him the condescending?

How could you? Recently, Jennifer and I, some

of you are too good at this, OK? Some of you like I was.

I was built for this. Recently, Jennifer and I went on

a trip to gather with a bunch of pastors from around the country.

And that means that I had to fly.

And I am, you can tell by looking at me I was not built

for airplanes. The they don't airplanes don't

come in Clayton size. OK.

And I got to be honest with you, as much as Jennifer and I try to

be really good Christians, when we get in an area where there's

mass transportation, we get a little judgy.

And that is exactly what was happening as we were sitting in

the airport that we were going to kind of a, a challenging

place to get to from Saint Louis.

So we had to fly. Then you have to get out and

wait for a while or rush and then you have to fly again.

And while you're doing that, you start looking at people and you

observe things. And the only thought that kept

going through my head was how could you give you a couple

examples? We're sitting there eating some

food and there is a guy there with some kind of dog.

I don't know if it is a a therapy dog or a service animal

dog, but it was a full size Pitbull.

And I'm thinking to myself of all the therapy dogs or of all

of the service dogs you could pick.

You can get like if you need a cute little cuddly poodle to sit

on your lap just to I'm not doing well.

I feel so much better now. You got, you got little poodle

dogs, you got like the happy golden retriever who just can't

wait to be super helpful. You got the the standard black

lab who's just ready to be there and everybody wants to come up

and pet. Or of all the dogs, how could

you possibly pick a full size pit bull that is going to go on

the plane and sit next to somebody else's crotch in the

plane? I'm sitting next to a pit bull

and now I need a therapy dog, right?

How could of all the dogs, how could you pick that one?

I go into the restroom. Guys, you're going to track with

me. I go into a airport public

restroom. A guy is in the urinal with his

hand. I've never seen this before.

I'm not looking anything else. I can just see his hand is on

the top part of the urinal, full touch, all 5 fingers.

He gets ready to sneeze, lifts his hand off of the urinal, puts

it back on the urinal. At this point, I'm fully

invested. I'm letting other people go past

me so I can keep judging. This guy, he gets done.

Does he wash his hands? If you think he washed his

hands, raise your hand. I got a bridge to sell you.

This guy did not wash his hands and he just walked out.

How could you let me say this, Christians, you should always

have a wet hand When you shake somebody's hand, Midwest people,

we, we feel so bad. We're like, I, I just washed my

hands. I was in the restroom.

I want to give you a kiss because you know what that means

that you are a normal human being.

It's when you shake someone's hand, you just got out of the

bathroom and it is dry as a bone.

You're dirty, right? You just I'm not OK now can and

I'm how could you possibly do this?

Then we go to get on the plane and Jennifer and I don't make

first class money. OK?

So what we rely on is the exit row because I am 6 foot six, 280

lbs and I don't fit anywhere else.

I don't get up in planes all right, no matter how long it is.

I'm not going to the bathroom. I get in my seat.

I put my head. I have to have the the window

seat. So I have a place to put my head

because the backrest stops about 7 vertebrae down.

So I'm trying to put my head and it has no place to go.

And if you've never rode in the exit row, it is designed for big

poor people. That is who the exit row is

designed for. And there'll be some bougie

little girl who's like, oh, I want to send the exit row so I

can, you know, kick, you know, air.

And they put everybody in there. And then there's a special thing

that happens the, the person who's on the plane.

I don't know if you're allowed to call them stewardesses or

what they're called now, but the, the person who works there.

And if you are a stewardess and that's not what you're supposed

to say. I mean, no ill will.

I just your name tag doesn't come with who you are

organizationally on it. And they, they, they look at

everybody and they say, hey, guys, in the event that this

thing goes down, you're in charge of opening up the exit

wing doors. And, you know, if you're,

there's any reason why you can't do that, we need to know and

there's some responsibilities. Please make sure you look at the

pamphlet and understand this is, we're on a, you know, 730-7800

A, and there's some rules applied.

They're going to know this. And then I need verbal

confirmation. And they go down and they make

everybody do the verbal confirmation.

But what they don't do is let the rest of the plane vote on

whether or not we want this idiot to be the one who opens

the door. I sit there and I'm like, I'm

going to knock her out and him out and then I'm opening the

door. They don't even they don't even

lift up the pamphlet. I'm the only one who lifts up

the pamphlet because I'm a good Christian.

I sit there and I go, this is a new plane.

I've never had to open it. But if I do, did you know that

you're supposed to do it differently if there's a fire?

Did you know you're supposed to do it differently if there is?

If you're on water, did you know that your side doesn't actually

come with the automatically deflated slide that comes out?

That's only for the people in the very front of the plane, the

1st classers or the people in the back.

US, we have to fight back into the middle of the aisle, lift

the the the thing out, shove it out there, attach it to the

wings. There's wing mounts.

But nobody in the row knows any of this.

I'm sitting there like I'm going to kill people before I save

people. And I'm thinking of all the

plight of all the flight stuff they take you through.

How could you not let other people vote on whether or not we

want this kid with his Earpods in who's not even listening, who

just said, yeah, sure, yes, sure is not going to cut it anyhow,

how could you? But this was the best one of

all. And OK, now listen, I'm, I'm

going to I'm going to reference COVID.

Just please don't lose your mind.

We were in the airport and there were a a couple parents there

who were mask wearers in 2024, which you're fine.

Some people fell in love with them.

I didn't. But if you did, it's great.

I don't know what else was going on.

So you can tell. Hey, give them space.

They're definitely nervous about getting sick and they may had a

really special reason, like they might have been going to see

somebody they love and they don't.

So like, I get it. So you got these two people who

are being very particular. However, they had kids with them

who were crawling on the airport floor and licking the tires of

the stroller. And I'm there, I'm going

Jennifer's like bruising my knee, like just keeps these two

people are pulling their mask down to take the little bite of

their bagel and then putting their mask back.

I meanwhile, the kid is just licking the tire and I'm going,

how? How could you?

Like I said, you just want to scream sometimes to people.

How could you? And I think you're going to be

thinking the exact same thing when we find ourselves in the

text today. For those of you who are here

for the first time or the first time in a long time, we are.

You're maybe even missed the last couple of weeks.

We are in a sermon series called Decisions in the Desert.

Every single one of us are going to find ourselves at some point

in time in the desert. And the decisions that you make

in the desert will define you. They will determine your

destiny. And during this series we were

looking at one of the most famous stories in all of

scripture and one of the most referenced stories in all of

scripture. The story is the story of Moses

and the Israelites being delivered out of bondage and

slavery in Egypt, journeying through the desert and into the

promised land that God had provided for them.

Quick recap, in order to free them, God demonstrated 10

plagues, the 10th of which was the death of the first born,

which is where we get the Passover, which paints a

beautiful picture of what Jesus did on our behalf.

Then the Israelites, they leave Egypt, but they do so by

plundering the Egyptians. The Egyptians give them all of

their wealth, all of their gold, all of their possessions.

Then the Israelites find themselves in front of the Red

Sea, and the Egyptians change their mind and are chasing after

them. This is Jerry's message last

week, which was an incredible message.

If you haven't watched it, you should.

And God parts the Red Sea, delivers the Israelites, and

then eliminates the Egyptian oppressors.

Then as the Israelites are following through the desert,

they are guided by a pillar of fire by night, which gives them

warmth in the desert cool of the evening, as well as it gives

them light. And during the day they follow a

pillar of cloud which provides them shade from the desert sun

and also gives them a guide to follow.

Then they get to a place where they are ready to drink, because

obviously if you're going through a desert, you're going

to need some water to drink. And they find a place that has

water after three days of no water, and the water is bitter.

It is undrinkable. God tells Moses how to solve the

issue and he turns the bitter water sweet and makes it

drinkable by throwing a piece of wood in it.

The people become hungry and God makes a promise to them that

every morning there will be mana on the ground for them to pick

up. It will form like dew on the

grass, and every night there will be quail birds meat for

them to eat. So every day God provided them

with mana in the morning and quail in the evening to supply

all of their food needs. Then they journey a little bit

further into the desert and again they have run out of water

and God tells them to speak to the rock and that the rock will

flow out water. And you think, oh that's really

cool, water starts seeping out of a rock.

You would be wrong. The water supply of this large

mass of people would have been about four to 6,000,000 gallons

of water every day. So when water comes out of a

rock, it is not trickling like out of your bathroom faucet.

It is a geyser of water for you to drink.

Let me put this in perspective. If you would sent your kid to

crossing camp this year, this is the lake at crossing camp.

We don't have a great name for it.

We should name it one day. This is our lake.

If that lake was 8 feet deep, that would be the water

requirements of the Israelites every single day.

When water comes out of the rock, it is no small miracle.

They journey further along and they arrive in the desert of

Sinai. This would be modern day Egypt

or Saudi Arabia. And it is here that God invites

Moses up onto the mountain, Mount Sinai to speak to Moses

and to give him the law. Now we're going to unpack what

happens after that. Over the next couple of weeks,

we're going to dive into the law.

And I know what you're thinking. Oh my goodness.

We're going to start talking about the parts of the Bible

that I ignore in my Bible reading plan.

And what I want to tell you is, is I think we're going to take

one of the parts of the Bible that you think is the worst part

of the Bible and turn it into one of your favorite parts of

the Bible if you show up. So Moses goes up on the mountain

and why he is on top of the mountain, things get really,

really bad down at the bottom. Think about how you felt after

last week's message. You probably felt a little

encouraged. You probably felt a little

energized. You felt a little bit excited.

You felt a little joyful. And that's completely true.

And it changes so stinking fast in the text.

You go from the high of highs to the low of lows.

And sometimes I've noticed that that's what happens to us, too.

We have this incredible experience, followed by a very

dark season. Moses is on top of the mountain.

He is getting the words from God himself.

He's getting the 10 commandments as well as some other ones.

This is how it opens up Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

And God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God, who

brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything

in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters below.

You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord

your God, am a jealous God. Well, I want you to remember

that because at this exact moment, the mountain where Moses

is hearing from God feels alive to all of the people that are

down below. It's as if the mountain is

breathing. This is a picture of what it

would have felt like. There was Thunder and there was

lightning and there was a thick cloud of smoke inhabiting the

top part of the mountain. And the people were amazed that

something was happening. They didn't know what was

happening. They couldn't see what was

happening. They just knew that Moses was up

on the mountain with God and they were in the valley below.

And while Moses is getting this incredible word from God up top,

something is stirring down below.

Exodus chapter 32 verses one through 6.

Exodus 32 · chapter mention

When the people saw that Moses was so long, everybody say so

long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around

Aaron and said, Come, make us gods who will go before us.

As for this fellow Moses who has who brought us out of Egypt, we

don't know what has happened to him.

Aaron answered them. Take off the gold earrings that

your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring

them to me. So all the people took off their

earrings and brought them to Aaron.

He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the

shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool.

Then they said, these are your gods, Israel, who brought you up

out of Egypt. When Aaron saw this, he built an

altar in front of the calf and announced tomorrow there will be

a festival to the Lord. So the next day the people rose

early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented

fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat

and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Revelry is a very Christian way of saying they partied

incredibly hard. Can you see what's happening?

God is talking to Moses on the mountain, saying, I am the Lord

your God who brought you out of Egypt.

You shall have no other gods before me, of nothing in the

heavens above, the earth, or the waters below.

And while that exact same thing is happening down in the valley,

the people are doing the exact opposite.

They are building an idol. They are giving credit to that

idol for the work that God has done.

And as I read these verses, there are at least 4 failures

that jump off the page that make me want to look at the

Israelites and go how could you? I know you're experiencing some

hardship, I know you're experiencing some temptation.

But how could you? Look what it says in First

1 Corinthians 10:13

Corinthians chapter 10 verse 13. No temptation has overtaken you

except what is common to mankind.

I need to give you a mini devotional thought.

There are going to be moments where you're going to be tempted

to walk off the path that God has charted for you and you're

going to be tempted to go. The temptation was just too

much. But you need to know that there

has never been a temptation that has come upon you that is beyond

your power through God to overcome.

But the Israelites down in the valley do just that in at least

four ways. The first area where they

struggle is impatience. They become frustrated at the

timing of God. And I want to go, how could you?

You're like 40, you're 80 days into the deliverance.

You've experienced God's deliverance for 49 days by my

calculation, and Moses has been up on the mountain for just 40

days and you're already tired of waiting on God.

They're already tired of waiting on him, waiting on Moses.

Or maybe they were just tired of being anxious because they

didn't feel right having their leader absent for such a long

time. I got to be honest here.

If you were to talk to those closest to me on staff and to my

friends and family and you were to list what are the top three

things that Clayton gets, you know, an F at it would be

patience. Microwaves take too long to make

my food. I'm like, do I really 2 minutes?

What am I going to do when I get done eating at a restaurant?

I get up like, it's time to go, guys, what are we?

What are we just going to waste our lives here?

And so now my friends will order coffee and I'm like, can I just

go? Can you give Jennifer a ride

home? When I'm done, I'm done.

I just, I'm just hard wired. When I pull into a restaurant

that serves fast food and has a drive through, if the drive

through line is too long, guess what I do?

I go inside and I pick a car before I do like I'm going to

beat that car out of this parking lot.

Yeah. You may remember a sermon I

preached a long time ago at the beginning of the year called

There has to be a place. And the tagline in one of those

sermons was there has to be a place that gives people.

Time. That sermon had zero to do with

you. That sermon had everything to do

with me trying to live a life with the Holy Spirit because the

fruit of the Holy Spirit produces patience.

What do you do when God's timing is not your timing?

What do you do? Question Is there an area in

your life right now where you are frustrated because you feel

like you've been waiting on God for way too long?

When you find yourself in that spot, I think there are at least

two additional temptations when you are frustrated and you're

trying to wait on God. The first one is to start

believing that God doesn't exist.

The second temptation is to believe that He exists, but to

doubt who He is. He doesn't hear my prayers.

He doesn't care. He's not going to come through.

The second temptation is to figure out a way to do it on

your own power and your own strength.

When you're tired of waiting on God, you decide to take matters

into your own hands. You start to believe that God's

way isn't the best way, and that your way might actually be the

best way to accomplish the thing that God wants you to do.

The problem is, is you cannot accomplish godly things on human

power. This is where we get tempted to

go Well, the ends just justify the means.

I'll accomplish the godly thing. I'll just do it on my own power

and my own strength. For those of you who've been

around your Bible for a long, long time, I'm just going to

give you a little bit of a reference to a story and you're

going to go, Oh my goodness, that's exactly what happened.

God promised Abraham that a great generation would flow out

of him and his relationship with his wife, Sarah.

However, the promise took a lot longer to come about than they

thought. And so they had a really good

idea. This is what their great idea

was. Their great idea was it was

actually the woman's idea, which women sometimes have horrible

ideas. She said to her husband, hey,

how about you take my servant and you just have a kid with her

to fulfill the promise that God made for us.

And Abraham goes, I think that sounds like a great idea.

Sometimes guys have really bad ideas, and so he does it and he

ends up having a kid with the woman he's not supposed to have

a kid with because he had sex with somebody he wasn't supposed

to have sex with. And the idea was his wife and

women have horrible ideas and he followed her idea, which is also

not a good idea. And then I'm just going to cut

you off. Surprise, guys, guess what?

The wife actually got upset that the husband did what she told

him to do and didn't like what he'd actually done when he had

done it. I just read my Bible, folks.

I just read the Bible. You know what they were doing.

They were trying to accomplish the will of God in their own

power and their own strength with their own ideas because

they got frustrated waiting on God.

Where is an area in your life right now where you are

frustrated in the waiting? You're tempted to do it your own

way. The second thing that I believe

the Israelites did is they had a desire to go back, then went

back to their old way of thinking, their old way of

operating. For 400 years they've been in

captivity in Egypt. And guess what?

The Egyptian, one of the gods the Egyptians worshipped, they

worshipped an image that they had fashioned out of themselves

and you're going, how could you do it?

For the Egyptians, they worshipped a cow God named

Hathor was a goddess of love. The image a calf God has just

taken them out of the Egypt and they go back to worshipping the

gods that they were surrounded by in captivity.

And if those gods were so good to you, how come you were in so

much captivity? But as soon as things don't

start going the right way, they go back to Egypt.

This is the fatal flaw of the Egyptians.

They were out of Egypt, but Egypt wasn't out of them.

How many times have you and I done the exact same thing for

me? Too many to count.

When things don't go our way, we want to go back.

We have officially left the things that were hurting us,

that were breaking us down, that were causing us pain, that were

keeping us from our purpose, the things that were keeping us from

Our Calling. And then the moment things don't

go the way we want them to go, we go back to the very things

that were hurting us. The very things that were

keeping us in isolation, the very things that were pulling us

down, the very things that were robbing us of who God created us

to be. And we walk away from the

goodness of God. The moment following God gets

hard three different times at this point in the story, the

Egyptians are the Israelites have said, why did we come all

the way out here? It would be better for us to go

back. And how many times in your walk

with Christ have you left the old way, started walking in the

new life that he has provided for you?

And deep down inside, when things start to get tough, you

want to walk away completely. We've left the emotions and the

attitudes and the and the activities that were keeping us

in bondage. And we walk away from the

goodness of life with Christ. And the moment there's

adversity, we just want to go back.

The third thing I see happening there is Aaron gives in.

And Aaron is supposed to be the leader of these people.

And I want to scream. And Aaron, how could you?

You've been the mouthpiece of God.

Miracles have been performed by your hands, and the moment the

people around you turn their affections away from God, you

help them commit the sin. You were supposed to call them

back to God, but you actually participate in their rebellion.

Where Aaron? Where is your holy boldness?

Where Aaron is your courage, your commitment, your strength?

Where is it? And yet at the same time, how

many times have we done the same thing?

How many times have we known somebody, seen somebody do the

exact same thing? Too many times.

You and I have heard stories of people leaving the church,

giving in to the pressure of Satan, and just walking away

from the bride of Christ completely.

And they leave because they come up with their reason.

Things just aren't going the way they're supposed to go.

And other people join them in it.

Sometimes they'll say, hey, I'm not, I'm not going to go back.

Because, you know, all the hypocrites are at church.

And I mean, I've heard that, you know, 10,000 times.

And deep down inside, we want to tell them that's not true.

There's not hypocrites of the church.

But deep down inside, we know what's really true, which is

we're all a bunch of hypocrites. And so how do we tell them that

they're right when they're actually wrong?

I'll tell you, you've been here at church before you.

You know your level of hypocrisy.

You're super fired up for Jesus on a Thursday or on a Sunday,

and then you're an absolute troll in the office on Monday

and you're a Jack wagon to your family on a Tuesday.

And so when they say, you know, I'm not going back to the church

because the hypocrites, you're like, yeah, you're actually

pretty much thinking right on. So let me just give you some

coaching if you want some coaching.

If somebody ever brings up the hypocrite, talk to you here.

You could channel your inner Clayton.

Here is what I would say to somebody who says I'm not going

to church because of all the hypocrites.

I would say, just so you know, we don't worship us at our

church. We worship Jesus and we know

we're not perfect. We just know that he is and we

know that we fail and he never has.

And so if you were thinking that when you came to this church,

you were supposed to worship us, that was never the intention.

We were pointing you to him who's perfect in absolutely

every single way. And then I'll probably gently,

maybe double down, I would say, so where do you get gas?

They'd be like, what do you mean?

You know what do you mean? Well, I just want you to know

that when I go to fill my car up with gas, I don't avoid a gas

station because there's hypocrites getting gas.

I go there for the same reason everybody else does.

I need gas. I don't, hey, I can't shop at

that grocery store. There's fat people in there

eating in the unhealthy aisles. I don't do that.

How many of you have ever got a prescription from a fat Doctor

Who says you need to lose weight?

I don't sit there and go, hey, fatty, no, you know what I say?

You're probably stinking, right? So when I'm in a grocery store,

I don't go, hey, there's no there's a bunch of hypocrites

here. I can't get my food here.

I'm there for the same reason they're there.

I'm hungry and I need food. You know what?

When I'm sick, I don't say I'm not going to the hospital

because there's a bunch of sick people there.

I go there because there's other sick people there.

And you know why the other sick people are there?

Because they want to get better too.

So let me tell you something. I don't avoid church because the

people there are jacked up. I go to church for the same

reason everybody else goes to church, because I need saved.

I need forgiven, I need healed, I need redeemed, I need

repurposed. I need to be connected to him.

If I'm waiting for you to be a bunch of perfect people before I

can go to church, that's crazy. And no other area of your life

do you operate like that. But Satan will sow a seed of

stupid into somebody's heart, and they'll just live there

until somebody squashes it. So I squashed it. 4th mistake

that they make. OK, that's great.

Thank God bless you. All right, the fourth thing they

do is they misuse, and this one is the most devastating in my

opinion, of all. They take the jewelry out of

their ears and they make an idol out of it.

And I want to scream at them, how could you?

Do you know how you got those earrings?

You were in bondage for 400 years.

You had no inheritance, no generational wealth, you have no

bank account, you had no possessions.

But God made the Egyptians favorable to you, and they gave

you what they had. Look what it says in Exodus

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

chapter 12. The Lord had made the Egyptians

favorably disposed towards the people, and they gave them what

they asked for. So they plundered the Egyptians,

the Israelites, after 400 years of nothing, plunder a wealthy

country, and they take the very blessing that God gave them, and

they use it to rebel against him.

And you want to scream at the text, How could you?

And before I do, I think I've done the very same thing.

God did not just redeem me out of my sin.

As He was doing so, He placed inside of me His Holy Spirit

which gives me gifts, talents and abilities.

I don't just get saved, He plunders heaven on my behalf and

instills in me a power and a gift and an ability that I do

not deserve. And yet I can easily take the

very things that He has blessed me with and use it to just bless

myself and not the people around me.

What does it look like when you take those blessings and you use

the blessings against them? Our our gift of leadership is

used for our own glory instead of His.

Our our wealth is used to expand our Kingdom instead of His.

Our connections are used to expand our business instead of

being in the business of pointing people to Jesus.

We do our good works to be seen by outsiders instead of to love

one another. Every time I read about the

Israelites, I just want to scream.

How could you? After all that you've seen,

after all that you've experienced, how could you?

How could you? After you saw God move in a

mighty way in the 10 plagues? How could you?

How could you after you plundered the Egyptians?

How could you? How could you after you crossed

the Red Sea on dry ground with a wall of water on your right and

a wall of water on your left? How could you?

How on the earth could you possibly rebel against God when

you are walking in a cloud of fire but or a pillar of cloud by

day and a pillar of fire by night?

How could you? How could you when there is

manna in the morning and there is quail in the evening?

How could you? How could you when you are

drinking from water that came out of a rock 4,000,000 gallons

a day? How well could you?

But Paul writes in Galatians chapter 5 verse 7, you are

Galatians 5:7

running a good race. Who cut in on you to keep you

from obeying the truth? And before I get too mad at the

Israelites, I end up looking at myself in the mirror and going,

How could you? Because you and I, we probably

do the same thing over and over and over again.

One of my weird quirks is when I go into people's houses, if they

have, you know, what I call stupid art on the wall, I read

it out loud as if I'm just saying it randomly.

So like, I'll be in someone's kitchen.

Like, people really don't know how much you care or care how

much you know until they know how much you care.

And my wife will just start looking around for the sign.

You know, we came into your house as friends, but we're

leaving his family. So it's just, I got this thing.

If I go to your house, I'm going to find something stupid that

you put on a wall. And I'm going to, I'm going to

say it like it's mine. So I was at a friend's house and

there was a sign on the wall. This what the sign reads.

I still remember praying for all the things I have now.

Can't you? You ever just looked back and

seen how he has actually been faithful at every turn?

I still remember praying for all the things I have now.

Oh, I don't have a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of

fire by night, but I have a long list of answered prayers.

He's been faithful at every turn.

He has never been on my timeline, but he has always been

on time. In fact, even when he was late,

he was still on time. He's always delivered.

He's always supplied. He has always come through and I

want to look at all of my failures and my missteps along

the way. There is not a single thing that

he has not redeemed and repurposed.

And I want to look at myself in the mirror and go, how could

you? Crossing family in this life,

you will experience times of waiting, times of hardship,

times of uncertainty. And the very last thing that you

want to do is walk away from the one who will get you through.

And you might be thinking that I preached this sermon and the

reason I titled it how could you is because I was thinking that

you and me were so bad. Nope, I titled it How could you?

Because I was thinking about Jesus.

Because if I could ask him any question, I would ask him.

How could you, in all of your perfectness, take on all of my

sin? How could you, knowing that I

would fail you over and over again?

How could you make your mercies new to me every single morning?

How could you, knowing that I would fail you, still give me

your Holy Spirit? How, knowing that I was going to

fail you, would you still be there for me at every turn?

I'm not looking at you and I'm not looking at me going How

could you? I'm looking at Him and going,

How could you be so good to me knowing I've been so bad?

We're moving to a time of decision.

If you are here today and you don't have a relationship with

Jesus Christ, I'm just going to be edgy with you for a second.

You are either following Jesus or you are following Satan.

There is no middle ground. Your life is either being

directed by God or your life is being directed by the enemy.

You either belong to God or you belong to Satan, and when you

die, you will go to the one that you belong to.

There is no middle ground. And if you were here today and

you've never started an intimate personal relationship with Jesus

Christ, don't put it off. Sometimes when I'm having

conversations with people who'll go, I want to say yes to Jesus.

I just know I'm going to screw up.

I want you to know God will not be surprised.

He's not going to like what? He knew you were going to sin.

He knew the sin you were going to commit.

He already decided in advance that He was going to put the

penalty of that sin on His Son before you ever committed that

sin. He is not surprised by that sin.

He sent His Son to save you from your sin.

And if you are waiting for you to be perfect to find a

relationship with him, if you're perfect, you don't need a

relationship with him. And I've said this 1000 times,

if you could fix you, he wouldn't have sent his son.

And if you're here today going, I know I'm going to fail in the

future, I want you to know you're right.

But you can get this thing right and you can get the most

important thing right. And the most important thing

that you can do is return you to Him and start an intimate

personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

To those of you who are here and you've never started that, I'm

going to encourage you in just a few moments to walk right over

there underneath that screen next to another baptistry.

If you're watching online, there's going to be somebody

who's going to pop something up in the chat and start asking the

questions to start that relationship today.

If you're here today and you already have a relationship with

Jesus Christ, maybe we should spend just a little bit of time

owning the areas in our life where we have not been obedient.

Maybe there's an area where you've been, you've given,

you've given up on praying because you're tired of waiting

and you need to pray that prayer again.

Maybe there's an area of your life where you know you've been

misusing the blessings of God and you're going, it's time for

me to use what you've given me to advance your Kingdom.

Maybe you need to just get down on your knees and just thank God

for all the times He has come through for you.

Maybe you just need to spend some time asking him how could

you be so good to me? Would you stand with me?

God, I'm asking you to do a work.

A work that can't be attributed to the sermon, that can't be

attributed to this church, that can't be attributed to the

worship I'm asking you to do. A work that could only be

attributed to your spirit moving in US, convicting us, changing

us, challenging us into your image and your name.

I pray. Amen.